Getting out of the "Spotlight Effect"
It’s amazing how convinced we can be that we have such little value or relevance and yet at the same time turn around and believe that everyone within a 20 mile radius is judging us and thinking about us all the time. The assumption that other people care about us at all let alone spend their precious energy to actively hate us is evidence that we might be falling for a common psychological phenomenon that we now call “the spotlight effect.”
The spotlight effect is our tendency to overestimate how much we are being noticed by others. It’s hard for us not to project our thoughts onto others and since we are thinking about how awful we are and how nobody likes us we tend to believe that others are picking up at least some of that energy as well.
The truth is, sometimes people do gossip about you and if your worst mistakes have been made public, there has been too many negative conversations about you to count. So there is some credence to this bias. But as fast as news travels, it also fades away. Even the most spectacular scandals in modern history aren’t spoke of as often as we think. When is the last time you talked about the O.J. Simpson trial?
We are the centre of our own universe but we are no where near, luckily, the centre of the universe of anyone out there. No matter how hard it is to believe, people just don’t care as much as you think they do. They might judge you when they see you, they might judge you when they hear about you but likely they’ll get tired of caring at all and drop it.
One of the best ways to prove this to yourself is to face the crowd. When you can show yourself in public and demonstrate that you aren’t going away, that you are determined to overcome, and that ultimately you’re over all this, then other people start to get the message as well. They’ll move on even sooner.
Public shame makes us want to hide in a dark corner and for the first little while you may be wise to do so. But eventually you will bump into people who know you and know your scandal. Each time this happens is an exercise in humility and courage. You will be tempted to assume that they will scorn you or spit on your face or try and cancel you again. You’re certain that they will return to their cabal of busybodies to gossip, “you’ll never know who I just saw at the gym…” But what is more likely is that they will be stressed about picking up their kid at daycare or whether they can pay for their other kid’s braces and forget that your thing was even a thing in the first place.
You’re not that important. And that’s good news.
Like a teenager with a zit on her forehead you assume everyone is looking and is horrified. There might be a few insensitive jerks who point out the zit but most don’t notice and don’t care enough to notice. In fact, sometimes our attempt to hide the zit makes it more noticeable. The more you accept it’s there the sooner you can move on to more important topics.
If we were all busting out of prison and a spotlight was used to zero in on our suspcious behaviour, the best thing we could do, when the light is on us, is to be normal and confident. It will show that there is nothing to see of interest here and the spotlight will move on to someone else who seems more suspicious. The same principle can be applied here. If the spotlight is on you, show them how boring you are and it will move on. They expect you to be curled up in a ball sobbing or flipping out on people in a paranoid rage. This is interesting and will draw more attention. But if you’re living your life, working on your hobbies, going to work, and helping your fellow man, well that’s too boring to have a spotlight on it for too long.
No one cares. And if they do look, try not to give them anything interesting to see.